Free Republic

President Donald Trump raged over some disappointing economic news shortly before his Commerce Department delivered it to the public on Friday morning. “The Democrat Shutdown cost the U.S.A. at least two points in GDP. That’s why they are doing it, in mini form, again. No Shutdowns!” declared the president in a 7:50 a.m. Truth Social post. “Also, LOWER INTEREST RATES. ‘Two Late’ Powell is the WORST!!!,” he added. Less than an hour later, his administration announced that the United States’ GDP grew at an annualized rate of 1.4% in the fourth quarter of 2025. The 43-day government shutdown last fall...

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) declared on Thursday that he “WILL NOT BE BLACKMAILED” following a report suggesting an aide committed suicide after an alleged affair with the congressman. “I WILL NOT BE BLACKMAILED. Disgusting to see people profit politically and financially off a tragic death. The public should IMMEDIATELY have full access to the Uvalde Police report,” Gonzales wrote on X. The congressman included a message from a lawyer offering a non-disclosure agreement and settlement. I WILL NOT BE BLACKMAILED. Disgusting to see people profit politically and financially off a tragic death. The public should IMMEDIATELY have full access to...

A new report from City Journal‘s Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo takes readers inside all that is alleged about Nick Fuentes’s involvement in the Ali Alexander-underage photos scandal. Fuentes and Alexander, both of whom are far-right activists, have a longstanding relationship, and the latter is perhaps best known for having allegedly solicited nude photos from two underage boys, including a 15-year-old. According to Thorpe and Rufo, Fuentes allegedly knew about Alexander’s proclivities before Milo Yiannopoulos, another far-right activist, publicized them in 2023. From Thorpe and Rufo’s report: On a livestream in 2017, Fuentes said there was “abundant evidence” that Alexander...

The Justice Department said it has released “all” files tied to dead sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, according to a letter sent by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche to lawmakers on Saturday night.Bondi and Blanche’s letter said the DOJ has fulfilled its obligation to release files as part of the Epstein Transparency Act and outlined why it redacted certain portions.“In accordance with the requirements of the Act, and as described in various Department submissions to the courts of the Southern District of New York assigned to the Epstein and [Ghislaine] Maxwell prosecutions and related orders, the Department...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) grilled Trump administration officials in charge of immigration enforcement during a Senate hearing on Thursday. Paul confronted them with a breakdown of the video of Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, asking them if their officers acted professionally in killing a man he claimed did not show any aggression. “Today, we explore the rules of engagement, the rules for the proper use of force, and the rules for the use of force that are proportional to the threat,” Paul said. “My goal with this hearing is not to condemn or to argue to defund ICE; my...

President Donald Trump went off on Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) on Wednesday, branding him a “RINO” — Republican In Name Only — who got it all “WRONG” when he claimed the president was only inviting Republican governors to an upcoming annual meeting. Trump’s searing response came after the Associated Press reported the bipartisan meeting was “unraveling” on Monday. Stitt — who chairs the National Governors Association — said the group was ditching the annual meeting because Trump had not invited his Democratic colleagues, who are equal members of the group. Trump posted on Truth Social that he was only...

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) argued Americans would be “justified” shooting ICE agents if they believed they were “masked hoodlums” attacking them — and not one of the government’s “goons,” as he put it.The Democratic lawmaker made the eyebrow-raising statement during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday. “If you were attacked by a masked person, you might think you were being kidnapped. You would be justified in shooting the person to protect yourself,” Nadler said. He said President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration has spurred “fascism in our streets.”Nadler then pointed to the recent shooting death of Renee Good...

President Donald Trump declared that The New York Times must “pay a price” on Thursday after the Gray Lady and Siena University released a new poll suggesting that just 40% of registered voters approve of him. In a write-up about the survey, the Times’ chief political analyst Nate Cohn observed that “The major demographic shifts of the last election have snapped back. In today’s poll, Mr. Trump’s approval rating by demographic group looks almost exactly as it did in Times/Siena polling in the run-up to his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. If anything, young and nonwhite voters are even...

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre replied Monday to President Donald Trump’s highly controversial letter linking his desire to acquire Greenland to being snubbed for the Nobel Peace Prize, which is given out by a committee of five chosen by the Norwegian parliament. “I can confirm that this is a text message that I received yesterday afternoon from President Trump. It came in response to a short text message from me to President Trump sent earlier on the same day, on behalf of myself and the President of Finland Alexander Stubb,” Støre replied, adding: "In our message to Trump we...

A House Republican is warning that if President Donald Trump were to order a military invasion of Greenland, it “would be the end of his presidency.” In an interview with the Omaha World-Herald, Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said he personally would “lean toward” voting to impeach the president if he were to follow through on threats to take over Greenland. “I’ll be candid with you. There’s so many Republicans mad about this,” Bacon told the paper. “If he went through with the threats, I think it would be the end of his presidency.” Bacon — who often breaks from MAGA...

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was reportedly in the dark about the Trump administration’s plan to invade Venezuela and depose President Nicolas Maduro. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the White House excluded the nation’s top intelligence from discussions about the planned ouster, which was carried out on Saturday. People familiar with the situation said that Gabbard had previously opposed U.S. intervention in the South American country. “The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela,” Gabbard, then a Democratic member of Congress, tweeted in 2019. “Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose...

Conan O’Brien warned comedians giving in to their anger at President Donald Trump that they are being “co-opted” and not making much of a difference. In a conversation with Oxford Union on Tuesday, O’Brien noted he often hears people say how “great” Trump must be for comedians. The one-time Tonight Show host argued the opposite, saying “talking crazy” is part of Trump’s brand and it makes it difficult to structure satire around it. O’Brien cited Trump’s construction of a White House ballroom as something sketch comedy writers would likely come up with to mock Trump — except it’s reality. “Comedy...

Ben, I’ve known you a long time, brother. You can’t handle the truth. Let’s face it, Ben Shapiro is the farthest thing from MAGA. Let’s be blunt. He is a hardcore never-Trumper. He’s a hardcore never-Trumper. In the spring of ’16, he tried to upend Breitbart. He walked off the job, made a big deal about some incident in Mar-a-Lago with Corey Lewandowski. He tried to turn it to Ted Cruz from Donald Trump because he hated Donald Trump. In the general election, he barely supported Donald Trump. The first sign of– when President Trump gets sent back to Mar-a-Lago,...

President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles offered a remarkably candid window into a presidency she described, repeatedly, as driven by impulse and a widening view of executive power, in a blockbuster Vanity Fair portrait built around months of exclusive on-the-record conversations. Wiles may be the most powerful figure in Trump’s West Wing besides Trump himself, but her role is exercised less as a brake than as a gearbox, translating the president’s instinct into policy, and urging everyone else to fall into line. “I’m not an enabler. I’m also not a bitch,” Wiles said. “I guess time will tell...

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) took a page out of the authoritarian, theocratic Iranian regime’s playbook over the weekend, deeming the country he serves “The Great Satan” during a rant on The Dean Obeidallah Show. Johnson offered his evaluation of his country after host Dean Obeidallah submitted that President Donald Trump’s strikes on alleged drug runners in the Western Hemisphere were “defining us as some kind of-, like a Putin-esque type of nation.” “Yeah, we are the world’s No. 1 bully, and we’re using our immense, unrivaled power to rule over those who have less power. And we’re doing it with...

Kim Kardashian posted a video on her Instagram account lamenting her recent failure of the bar exam, and images she included of her study notes revealed her grasp of the material may not be as strong as she had hoped. Kardashian, 45, began the process of “reading law,” an unusual path to becoming an attorney that is only available in a few states and involves studying as an apprentice under a licensed lawyer as a prerequisite for taking the bar exam instead of law school. According to interviews she gave at the time, she started this process in 2019, planning...

President Donald Trump announced that he will travel to Beijing in the spring to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump wrote on Truth Social that he spoke with Xi by phone on Monday. “I just had a very good telephone call with President Xi, of China,” Trump wrote. “We discussed many topics including Ukraine/Russia, Fentanyl, Soybeans and other Farm Products, etc. We have done a good, and very important, deal for our Great Farmers — and it will only get better.” Trump continued: Our relationship with China is extremely strong! This call was a follow up to our highly...

Barstool Sports chief Dave Portnoy says that he fully turned against the Democrat Party — especially during the Biden era — because the party decided that white people are evil. In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning on Sunday, Portnoy admitted to growing up in a liberal Democrat family, but has become thoroughly disenchanted with the party of the left, Mediaite reported. Portnoy tried to explain why the Democrats are losing young male voters. “People often think I have the answer… My nutshell [answer] is, generally, they were very anti-normal guys, like,” he told CBS reporter Tony Dokoupil. Dokoupil attempted...

NBC White House correspondent Garrett Haake asked President Donald Trump on Monday if he would sign the bill to release the Epstein Files now that he no longer opposes Republicans voting for it SNIP All I want is for people to recognize a great job that I’ve done on pricing, on affordability, because we brought prices way down, but they go way lower, on energy, on ending eight wars, and another one coming pretty soon, I believe. We’ve done a great job, and I hate to see that deflect from the great job we’ve done. So I’m all for it....

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) repeatedly cursed at law enforcement officials at Charleston International Airport on Thursday, calling police “f***ing incompetent” and berating Transportation Security Administration personnel, according to the incident report. The scene, first reported by Wired on Friday, began when police tasked with escorting Mace to her gate were a few minutes late in meeting her car outside the airport. Mace chose to use an access lane intended for flight crew members, a smaller checkpoint that is part of the Known Crewmember program and overseen by TSA. Officers from the Charleston County Aviation Authority Police Department, who expected her...